Well-logging color with mind-boggling speed. At 8 inches per second, the Printrex 980 is the fastest color inkjet printer/plotter available for plotting continuous logs. Blazing speed together with standard-setting reliability is a printer combination that simply can’t be beat.

When printing a .PDF log to the 980 from Adobe Reader, the colors on the log are printing incorrectly. How do I fix this?

When you open up the .PDF in Adobe Reader, select File, then Print, and in the Print dialog window click the ‘Advanced’ button. The Advanced Printer Setup window will come up like below. If ‘Let printer determine colors’ is not checked, CHECK it. Note that if it was unchecked, and you check it, some of the controls will go disabled, like below. Now, when you print your .PDF, the colors on the log should print correctly.

When printing a .PDF log to the 980 from Adobe Reader, I get white space gaps between pages, or the log is getting cut off on the sides. What is causing this?

You want to make sure that when you are creating your .PDF, you are rendering the .PDF correctly, and rendering the correct page size. One might think they have to render one giant page to get contiguous printing, when actually Windows can be made to print pages contiguously. If you are rendering in pages, the width must be correct. When you are creating your .PDF, it should be rendered for <=8.5” width, otherwise, if the PDF page definition is > 8.5” wide, you will have problems. Adobe will attempt to scale the content onto the driver page area, preserving the aspect ratio, and this will cause whitespace gaps between pages. Selecting ‘Fit’ will scale down the whole page to fit the displayed image (including visible margins) into the width, and the side effect will be shrinking the length too, causing gaps between pages. When viewing your .PDF in Adobe, move your mouse to the lower-left corner of the window, and it will display the logical page size in the lower left-hand corner (for example 8.5 x 11). What does your .PDF show for the page size?

Letter (8.5 x 11 in.) is the only paper size available for the 980. The 980 hardware and software is geared to print logs of any length at high speed, and to accommodate sequential printing of varying length jobs without intervention and without wasting paper. It was found that the best way to accomplish these goals is to offer the one most-common use page length, “Letter” (which translates into a minimum of 2 folded sheets containing one black position mark on the back), and allow the application to control resulting length through print data supply. So there is no max limit set by the printer driver, which works with applications that can send entire image (log) data continuously. Existing free and commercial applications are successfully using the printer in just this fashion.

Since “Letter” is the only page size that can be used, and it can’t be changed to any other page size in the driver, you have to render your .PDF’s with the correct Letter size (8.5 x 11 inch) which will print your .PDF in multiple pages of 8.5 x 11 inches, or you will experience all kinds of attempts to make the image fit by the driver. You have to match the Letter dimensions in your .PDF image (8.5 x 11 inch), and render in multiple pages.

If your .PDF is rendered for multiple pages of 8.5 x 11 inches, but you are still getting white space gaps between pages when printing through Adobe Reader, make sure in the Adobe Reader Print Window that “Actual size” is selected for the Page Sizing, and also make sure that “Choose paper source by PDF page size” is check marked, like below. Now when you print, you should get a continuous log without any white space gaps between pages.

The Printrex 980 will sometimes pause during the printing of a job for a cleaning? Why is this necessary?

The Printrex 980 will sometimes pause (stop, retract the paper, and then continue printing without a noticeable effect on the output image) during the printing of a job. This is due to an automatically determined need to clean the heads of the printer (it has 8 heads).

This printer has two banks of 4 heads, each containing a large number of nozzles (600 per inch for each of the 4 ink colors). In order to insure printout accuracy and quality, the printer performs automatic head cleaning. Cleaning can occur at the beginning of a document, anywhere during the printing of a document, and after printing at the point the printer becomes idle and enters its offline state.

An effort is made to clean at times least disruptive to document printing. The length of a cleaning sequence is determined by the condition of the inkjet nozzles, such as the need to remove evaporated ink around the nozzles, or removal of foreign objects (usually paper dust adherence).

Printer state and cleaning action can be seen (as well as heard as mechanical sounds) by watching a printer status window, which is available as a choice in the Printer Properties of the 980 Driver (under the Utility tab, click the "Status" button next to Start Status Monitor ,) or as a selection within the 980 Service Utility (click the "Printer Status" button at the bottom of the Window, next to the "Close" button)

Automatic checking of cleaning is needed and choosing the best appropriate time occurs:

(1) when the printer goes from offline to online state,

(2) at the beginning of a job when about two pages of data have been received by the printer,

(3) after a large number of pages have been printed, based on total volume printed,

(4) when a printer is about to go offline, and

(5) whenever the print head temperature goes higher than stable operating temperature because of current environment or print image duty.

First, go to your Start Menu, and select Devices and Printers, and in the Devices and Printers page, right click on the 980 (Network) or 980 printer, select Printer Properties, then in the Properties window under the General tab, click the “Preferences” button. In the 980 Printing Preferences window, click on “Color Settings”, and a “Properties…” button will appear. Click on the “Properties” button, and there you will find where you can adjust the overall Color Density. Lower the overall Color Density to either -25 or -30. We have found that -25 or -30 is best for the color density and works best for most customers that have dark print/colors or smearing issues, because if the Density is 0 (which is the default), it’s possible you will get some dark print/colors, which uses more ink.

Cookies on TransAct Website

We use cookies to help provide you with the best possible online experience. By using this site, you agree that we may store and access cookies on your device. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we use cookies.